Streaming media delivery is gaining popularity, as indicated by dramatically increased deployment of commercial products for playback of stored video and audio over the Internet and proliferation of server sites that support audio and video content. One common method of delivering streaming media is the Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), defined in IETF RFC 2326 by Rao et al. Implementations include the Darwin Streaming Server and the QuickTime Streaming Server manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc., of Cupertino, Calif.; Windows Media Services, manufactured by Microsoft, Inc., of Redmond, Wash.; the Helix DNA Server manufactured by RealNetworks, Inc., of Seattle, Wash.; and others. RTSP, unlike the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), is a stateful protocol that uses a session identifier to keep track of sessions. The server does not need to keep a transport layer TCP connection established for each control session, allowing the server to service more requests simultaneously through the use of multicast and broadcast streaming.
In a multi-core intermediary, one core may receive a control message from a client for a session being maintained by another core. This can cause confusion and unpredictable or undesirable behavior.